Referring to FIG. 1, a conventional storage area network (SAN) 10 includes one or more hosts (e.g., a host 12) connected to one or more storage arrays (e.g., a storage array 16) by a channel (e.g., a fibre channel switch 14, an IP switch for iSCSI and so forth). The host 12 accesses the storage area 16 by sending input/output (IO) transactions such as read commands to read data from the storage array or as write commands to write data to the storage array. When the host 12 sends data to be written to the storage array 16, the storage array generally sends an acknowledgment message to the host that the data was successfully written to the storage array or sends an error message that an error has occurred. When the host 12 sends a request to read data from the storage array 16, the storage array responds by providing the data to the host. In some situations, the data written to the storage array 16 is encrypted by the host 12 or the data read from the storage array is decrypted by the host.